


There’s a ghostly chill in the air

by Catharrington



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Age Up, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Bickering, Coming Out, Good Friend Robin Buckley, M/M, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26002186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catharrington/pseuds/Catharrington
Summary: The crew have a web series for their ghost hunting: Ghostly Chill. Billy films, Robin does most the talking, and Steve is in charge of bullshitting the ghost sightings. Because there is no such thing as paranormal activity, there just isn’t. Is there?
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	There’s a ghostly chill in the air

**Author's Note:**

> Second prompt fill. Originally posted on tumblr  
> I have added a longer ending onto it, included some spooky ghost stuff! Hope y’all enjoy!

“Cut, and print that!” Robin huffed, dropping her hand holding the mic down with a slap to the front of her skirt. The owner of the bar, an elderly woman with a cowboy hat and laced up vintage dress, wouldn’t stop following Robin with her knowing grin as she walked away. 

Billy scooted closer, as close as he could get with the hulking camera lifted on his bare shoulder. He leaned around the view lens and nudged Robin’s shoulder with his one free hand.

“You do something to piss off that witch, Buckley?” He probes. But his voice isn’t sharp, isn’t biting like his usual jabs are. Billy seems, hesitant.

Robin shrugs him and the feeling of the woman’s eyes off her back. Starts wrapping up the cord so she doesn’t have to look up.

“Great interview, Robs,” Steve comes up on the other side of Billy, scooting close enough to reach out for flexed golden muscles shirtless in the hot sun, but instead reached for the wrapped cord as Robin offers it. “I can’t believe that bat really thinks this house is haunted.”

“It is haunted,” Billy and Robin reply at the same time. They’re used to the skepticism in Steve by now. They get a roll of big brown eyes before Steve is flicking his hand over his shoulder in dismissal.

“We have to pack, lots more to do before tonight,” and he’s unclipped Robin from her mic, going back to their shared used van that has their bags and lives all packed neatly inside. “And, Bill! Put a shirt on would ya?” he says without meaning it.

Billy hefts the camera farther up his shoulder as he follows behind. Robin stays for a second. Looks up at the house’s second story window. Remembers what the woman described in her interview with a shiver down her back. Then she yanks herself to follow the two boys back to the van.

Hours later, one more grueling interview and Robin pointing at lonesome buildings to get Billy filming some b-roll while Steve annoyingly chats him up, finds them back at the house. Steve climbs out the drivers seat, shrugging on his jacket, as he pulls the longest parts of his hair free off the collar he notices he’s the only one on the house steps.

“Are you coming?” He asks in a tone that wasn’t a question.

Billy shuffles to his feet quickly. Shuffles around, lifts one more bag that he would usually carry, then he brushes past Steve as he walks into the open door of the house. They decided to set up their equipment right in the first room. Steve’s laptop and Robin’s arsenal of ghost hunting devices laid out in an orderly line. Billy has his hand on his preped camera, ready to lift its weight back up.

“I’m thinking,” Steve is typing away, the ticking noises unsettling in the silence. “I’m thinking we can do a sweep with the cameras, some light antagonizing, then a static voice box where we feed the replies and follow with some Polaroids in an attempt to capture the entity.” He said the last part with a sarcastic reverb.

Robin sighed long, clicking heir short nails against the table top just to add to the anxiety of noise. “Nope,” she popped her lips. “No, Steve. I think tonight we will catch something real.”

“You said that last time and it took me seriously forever to edit anything interesting into the final cut, I don’t think-,”

“Come on, pretty boy,” Billy spoke up, his voice husky in a whisper, “Didn’t you hear that old bat from earlier? This place is legit! She gets yelled at, scratched, even seen full bodies. Maybe we have a chance at a capture here.” Billy’s eyes are bright blue in the artificial computer light.

Steve worries his bottom lip before giving up, sighing out dramatically as he nods. “Sure, sure. Real ghosts. Be my guest and go talk to some dead people. I’m going to stay here,” he ignored Billy’s and Robin’s smiles as he turns to continue setting up the base. Flicking on a plastic torch light before plugging in a battery charging port. 

He slides an already full extra battery down the table top towards Billy, who licks his lips in victory as he catches it. Slips it into the back pocket of his tight jeans. “And maybe work a little so our shitty web show won’t get canceled? Hum?” Steve finishes with a hand on his hip. Cocking to the side so his narrow waist curves just right.

Robin just rolls her eyes, stomping off down the dark hallway, tugging Billy along by a cord so he stops watching Steve. 

She leads them down the narrow hallway, around the foot of the steps and a corner into a huge dining hall. The only lights are from the outside bleeding through the thick curtains, the glow of the camera view lenses, and the small pen light Robin uses to see her feet. Keeping it dark is good for the film, and for catching the best evidence. But it’s always nerve wracking to stumble around pitch black.

Billy didn’t seem to care much. He was watching behind her through the camera set on night mode, shades of greens all fuzzy with static but bright enough. “Think we really got something here, Buckley?” he asks.

The red light has been flipped on already. She looks to it then back to his wild blond hair kept in a tight pony and one eye she can meet. “Yeah,” she breaths out, surprises herself, “I mean it not everyday there’s a triple murder in a small town and the murderer never gets caught. The emotional energy trapped in these same walls. In these same floors. Must be electrifying.”

Billy smirked back at her. Flashing a thumbs up. He’s less distracting now that he threw on a hoodie, but he’s still presumptuous. She hurries herself with readying two tape decks. One she plays and announces their names, the room, and lays down. The other she holds in her hand and walks slowly to a huge mirror hanging behind the dining room table. Half loving the good shot it makes, half hating how the molten silver warps the room an eerily surreal way.

“EVP session one, Rob and Bill in the dining room. This is where the first murder- the mother, happened. She was found right here. With her throat slashed. Blood all over this very… same… mirror.” She shivers. 

Then she starts asking a list of normal questions, each loud and clear. She rewinds the tape in her hand a couple times to search for a reply, holding her breath each time, but they get nothing. She clicks the roof of her mouth in disappointment when she runs out of questions.

“Got nothing,” Billy announces. His face sour as he pans around the room.

“Maybe you should start antagonizing? You’re good at that.” Robin goes to hand him the tape when a static fuzz erupts into a voice.

“You two done?” Steve’s voice echos from the radio on Billy’s hip. “Come back here, I’ve got enough questioning.”

There’s a tense atmosphere that mostly dissipates as they start walking back. A quaint smile on Robin’s face as she calls Steve needy, they laugh, and hide the reason from the brunette when he asks.

“What’s so funny?” He narrows his eyes, his big brown eyes that cloud over with the reflection of green color playing off his laptop.

Billy keeps the camera up on his shoulder, turns to look down the hallway so that it shields his grinning face.

“We were close, Steve. I was about to have this brute here get some real results. Why did you call us?” Robin was a huffy mess. Pacing back and forth, watching the live feed of the camera on the laptop for a tick before walking around the table then doing it again.

“I want to set up some stationary cameras before we get far along.” He grabbed a long duffel bag, slinging it over his shoulder, before passing a matching one to Billy. “Want to catch something real,” Steve mocked in a high pitched tone, “or at least have enough rotating footage to bullshit it.”

She felt insulted, felt a knowing kick to her gut that there was something she was missing, but kept her mouth closed. Slumped down in the chair just to watch as the two boys started walking out.

“Think you can carry two?” Steve asked in low drawl as he hooked one duffel bags strap over Billy’s arm when the blond could very well have done it himself.

“Won’t even break a sweat, pretty boy,” Billy assures him. He flicks on the record button again then hefts the weight up with a smile. Steve seems impressed, watching him from the corner of his eye and smirking from the corner of his mouth as he leads them into the hallway and up the steps.

They climb the creaking old wooden steps slowly. The gloss finish making Steve’s expensive shoes squeak. Billy’s boots are loud as they reach the top and clunk down to the master bedroom.

“This is the hallway leading to the mother’s bedroom. It’s where the two children hid before they were found buy a still unnamed, still never brought to justice killer. One was in the room and tried to fight back against the man and his bloody knife, the other attempted to run. She only made it this far-,” Steve stopped talking and walking as he pointed his own pen light down at the floor. There was a rug laying over the hardwood. Red and brown and floral. It didn’t seem particularly menacing, and there was a practiced ease to how Steve raddled off the sensational story, but still Billy felt goosebumps lift over the back of his neck. 

He held his breath as a cold gust blew past him, considers it to be all in his head.

Billy steadies himself as Steve continues. “She made it here, to this hallway. To these floors. Before she was stabbed in the back by a murderer she didn’t know. And left to bleed out. Her life and energy drained. But how much of it remains?” Steve flicked his light up and around, searching for something. Then turned back to the camera with a serious eye.

“You got all that?” He breaks with a smile.

Billy lets out a breath he was holding. “Yeah?” He says back shaky.

“Great. Let’s get a camera set up right here pointing down the hallway- then in the master bedroom,” he started listing as he walked away.

Billy followed dutifully. Pulled his duffel bag off and set up the tripod he carried. Clicking the legs into place easy, snapping the camera onto its track easy, and leveling it all down the hall with the widest shot he could get. Billy stood up with the second camera still in its bag and turned to find Steve standing in the doorway to the room.

There was a light from the camera view lens that made Steve’s pale olive skin glow faintly, but the rest of him, his dark jacket and dark hair, sunk into the background like ink spider webbing out across parchment paper. He rang both alluring and spectral and, Billy paused as Steve turned around to go into the black room, he rang inviting.

“Steve?” He called as he crossed the threshold. The door was a thick fully wooden thing that had layers of years worth of paint built up. It was heavy, Billy notices as he walks past. So he notices with a jump as it starts creaking closed by itself. 

“Steve?” He tries again, hurried and serious. Billy doesn’t have a pen light of his own. The room is a bottom of the ocean dark void.

Then with a giggle Steve comes out from behind the door with a fluffy head of hair and a smile. Billy wants to throw a camera at him, but doesn’t get a chance as Steve comes close enough to touch. He reaches for the duffel bag strap, letting it drop from Billy’s tense shoulder onto the ground, before running his hands across their plane.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispers, trailing his hands across Billy’s shoulders, wraps a fist around the extra fabric of his sweater hood, then brushing his fingers feather lightly up the back of his neck. His baby hairs peaking out from the ponytail tickle his skin where Steve touches. It sends a rush, unlike the goosebumps earlier, now a flush of heat crept up. “I cant hold back any more,” he groans.

Billy opens his mouth and gets cut off by a hot open mouthed kiss, Steve sucking Billy’s top lip into his mouth and licking teeth, probing his mouth needy-like. Billy gasps wide-eyed, trying to maintain his fluctuating heart rate. 

“Babe,” he mumbles into Steve’s mouth. There’s a purring moan, Billy chases it with a kiss back. Repeats, “babe,” in his darkest voice before closing the short distance and getting his hands around Steve’s waist.

They get stomach to stomach, tilting their heads to the side so they can taste the roof of each other’s mouths until their lips glisten with spit and swell with soreness. Billy parts with a growl, pressing his forehead into Steve’s hard.

“Can’t hold back?” Billy mocks breathlessly.

Steve rolls his eyes but he looks pretty doing it. “Yeah, can you blame me? Walking around in the sun with no shirt on all day long. Sweating and flexing, looking so, so damn good.” Steve takes his hands from their grip on the back of Billy’s neck and squeezes both his arm’s biceps to emphasize his thirst. Billy not so subtly flexes, preening under the attention. Shinning with the way Steve sucks his lower lip in to bite down on it when he feels those muscles move under Billy’s hoodie.

“You are the one who says we need to keep this secret,” Billy points out.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Steve pleads.

They lean in for another kiss when the radio hisses static again. Successfully pulls them back from one another. Steve curses a string a sailor would be jealous of as he plucks the radio off Billy’s belt.

“Dingus, come in?” Robin’s voice is static.

“Dingus reporting,” Steve groans back over the radio to her.

“Can you two stop making out and please come down here to base camp?” Her voice is not hateful, not accusing, more joyful in a childish way. It makes Billy’s ears perk up. And Steve perks up with what she says next. “You’ll he happy to know you won’t be editing much for this episode! We just caught a figure in the hallway that will blow your big hair right off!”

Billy starts walking out only to have Steve catch him by the arm, laying another kiss to his lips before he whispers, “set up the other camera first?” Billy rolls his eyes but he does.

The hallway seems undisturbed as they trek back through it. Steve leads them back to the headquarters where Robin meets them with wide, sparking green eyes. She shoves Steve’s laptop across the table to face them. 

“The camera you just set up in the hallway, I was switching to this live feed and- shit! You just gotta watch it!” She’s shivering with anticipation as she clicks across the page. Wacks the play button hard enough Steve wants to scold her. But his words catch in his throat as he watches the screen. 

Across the hallway, a myriad of green pixels that pick up much more light than Steve’s little pen light ever could, there’s a mist. It grows as if rising from the top of a fire right on the area of the murder. Grows and forms into a few feet tall before gliding down the middle of the hallway. It seems to turn and take the steps down disappearing from the camera. 

Robin pauses the clip, turning from the screen towards them two. Billy’s got a shit eating grin on his face, Steve’s almost as pale as a dinner plate. 

“How’s that for catching something, Steve?” She asks. 

Steve lifts his jaw, snapping it back into place with a pout. “That could be the air conditioning kicking on?” He says it with disbelief, trying to convince himself. 

“That is so not the air conditioning!” Robin huffs. 

“Oh my God, Robs,” Steve dismisses her with a wave of his hand, “there is no such thing as ghosts-,”

Steve’s cut off by a creaking noise, just outside the room and up the steps. As if someone’s just stepped their foot on the top of the staircase. 

The three turn their heads at the same time, looking out the doorway to where the steps were. The house suddenly seems quiet as a graveyard. Dark as one too. Robin doesn’t blink or take her eyes away as she grasps her recording device on the table and flicks the tape on. 

Billy takes a second to notice her out the corner of his eye, then he’s reaching for a tiny hand held spare camera they left on the table. He wishes he had his larger rig, but he’s gonna take what he can get. Flicks the switch to record. It switches to night vision the same as the others. He watches through the fold out viewer as he cranes his neck to see into the hallway.

There’s another creak just as he gets the bottom of the steps in frame. 

Steve cups one hand over his mouth as they listen. His other hand reached out almost by itself to tangle with Billy’s fingers. They grip back, holding tight as the air seems to grow come around them. 

Seconds tick by of absolute silence, then, quickly building, noise growing until it’s unmistakeable, the sound of footsteps. Taking one step at a time, slowly at first, then gaining as they descend. Until they quicken their pace, the noise gaining in both volume and time as it pitches to near running. 

Billy’s got his camera on the steps to catch as it runs where it would be in frame. Where whatever it is would run into the landing and show itself. But it doesn’t. Nothing does. 

Robin lets out a whimpering gasp as the moment passes. Steve’s hand doesn’t move its embrace one inch, and that’s fine with Billy as he grips right back. 

They stand in the silence. The video still recording as well as the tape deck Robin set up still spinning. Simply waiting, shocked, from the activity in the house. 

Steve is the first one to talk. He clears his throat, shaky as he turns to Robin with almost a smile. “Hey Robs, I wanted to let you know. Now, like, especially now. Billy and I are dating!?” He laughs dumbly. Pushing his free hand through his hair to keep it off his forehead. 

“Pretty boy,” Billy drawls out. He shakes his head. Still not moving the camera off the steps, but smiling his own dorky grin. 

“Hey Steve, I wanted you let you know,” Robin mocks his tone with her own shaky voice, trembling as she clutches the side of the table, “ghosts are real.”

They dissolve into quiet laughter. Shock and a heavy respect for the old house lingering in the air. As well as a static charge, and a slight chill. Billy shivers, grips Steve’s hand tight as he lifts it to plant a kiss across his knuckles. 

“What the hell,” Steve mutters.

Billy repeats him fondly, “what the hell.”


End file.
